Paper Mario Color Splash is a Nintendo exclusive title and it is not like any other Mario game including other Paper Mario games. It is a 3D action platformer but it is has strong RPG parts to the battle system. Most of the time you get to decide if you want to fight. You just touch a Turtle or a Spiny for example and you are in a battle. A stranger shows up at Mario’s house on a raining night to deliver a message. As he open the letter he discovers that it Toad but all of the color has been drained away. Mario, Toad and The Princess set sail for the land of Prism to try and restore the world back to color.

Paper Mario Color Splash is based around two things; paint and a magical hammer given to you by a talking paint can named Huey. The hammer is how you attack along with stomping and the paint is where the power comes from. When we first started playing to be completely honest we did not like the game at all. It felt like there were too many steps to do simple things. The battles are all retro turn based like old school Final Fantasy or Suikoden and we love it. It also uses a card battle system. But, each time you fight you have to scroll through your cards, tap your card, charge up your card with paint if needed, flick the card off the gamepad and then hit the button in a quick time event each time you attack. That is a lot of steps every time you fight. That’s at least five different things to do and most of the time it takes several rounds to win.

The more we played however the more we started to like how the game is set up. Doing all of the steps did not feel pointless, they started to feel strategic. Certain cards work better on certain enemies, and before the fighting you can walk up and hit your enemy with the hammer. This means when you start fighting they are already missing some life. Or, if you are strong enough from leveling up you will kill them instantly and get coins, paint and cards without having to go through the battle. Remember this is more of a role playing game than a 3D platformer. You start to get more paint, more cards, use more cards in battle and real life item cards that have very powerful special attacks. The items cards are also very special besides combat. There are tons a problems, areas, and even boss battles that require you to have one of these special real life item cards to move forward or do an optional secret mission.

Paper Mario Color Splash took us a little over 40 hours to get through the main story and around another 10 hours to get a 100% game completion rate. There are 40 levels to explore and there is a lot of fun extra stuff to do. Each level is missing color so you get to fill it in with paint, Luigi is hidden throughout the game and there are Paper, Rock, Scissors challenge temples to get special cards just to name some of the optional stuff. The only thing we did not like is that there are areas and bosses that require a certain special item card and you have no idea what card you are supposed to use or where to find it if you don’t already have it. The hints were not good and you just had to use trial and error or get off your lazy ass and look it up online. Paper Mario Color Splash is worth paying $45.00 of less for. It is extremely fun and unique in many ways and even stuff like the music is really good. If you can get it under $20.00 or less it is a MUST BUY PRICE for all Nintendo Wii U owners!